The present invention relates generally to the field of evaluating the craftsmanship of an article. The present invention also relates to the field of evaluating the attributes of components that comprise the article.
It is known to provide for evaluations of the quality of articles of manufacture. For example, it is well known for particular commercial entities to conduct rather exhaustive evaluations of a wide variety of articles allowing comparison by customers and others for such articles. It is further known to evaluate the quality or craftsmanship of articles of manufacture using consumer surveys, opinion polls, grading questionnaires or performance test results. However, in the evaluation of quality and craftsmanship, it is difficult to identify with specificity the particular attributes to give generally the xe2x80x9cholisticxe2x80x9d feel of quality to a user or customer of the article. Moreover, such known methods for evaluating the quality of articles often fail to identify a sufficient number of attributes to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the quality as well as craftsman of the article. Such known methods for evaluating the quality of articles also typically do not provide detailed information in a standardized format for allowing comparison between vehicles and types of vehicles to comprehensively evaluate craftsmanship in the design, selection, construction and assembly of components or articles that comprise the vehicle.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide for a system and method of evaluating the craftsmanship of an article of manufacture that provides a more objective identification and rating of the attributes generally considered or identified as comprising quality and craftsmanship of the article of manufacture. It would also be advantageous to provide for a system and method for evaluating the craftsmanship of an article that can be used by customers, suppliers, manufacturers, designers, engineers, competitors, and a wide variety of other persons. It would also be advantageous to provide for a system and method of evaluating the craftsmanship of an article that allows technicians or other persons performing the evaluation to be directed to perceive particular categories, components, assemblies or elements of the article. It would further be advantageous to provide for a system and method of evaluating the craftsmanship of an article that provides a listing of attributes that breaks the otherwise subjective measure of quality and craftsmanship into essentially objective areas which can be perceived and evaluated. It would further be advantageous to provide for a system and method of evaluating craftsmanship that allows the assignment of ratings or xe2x80x9cgradesxe2x80x9d according to a predetermined scale and the identification of flags, assignment of demerits, recordation of comments and recommendations during the evaluation as particular attributes or areas are perceived by the technician conducting the evaluations. It would further be advantageous to provide a system and method of evaluating an article that provides reports in a variety of formats listing and allowing comparisons by category, attribute, component, element or other format.
It would further be advantageous to provide a system and method of evaluating an article having any one or more of these or other advantageous features.
The present invention relates to a system for evaluating the craftsmanship of an article as perceived and includes a list of components to be evaluated, a list of attributes by which the components are to be evaluated, and a report providing a quantitative score of each component according to each attribute. The attributes include visual attributes, tactile attributes, functional attributes, and psychological attributes.
The present invention also relates to a method for evaluating the craftsmanship of an article having multiple components or assemblies and includes evaluating visual attributes of at least one component or assembly, evaluating tactile attributes of at least one component or assembly, evaluating functional attributes of at least one component or assembly, and evaluating psychological attributes of at least one component or assembly.